Chapter 11: A Hundred Feet From the Picnic

At noon my whole family was sitting on the lawn in folding chairs, eating deviled eggs a hundred feet from the barn.

I was standing in the barn doorway in a green sundress, looking back at them.

My aunts had spread tablecloths on three picnic tables.

My father held court in a lawn chair with a paper plate on his knee.

Janelle was telling a story with both hands, and Nick was laughing at the right places.

The sun was out for the first time in two days, and the maple at the bottom of the pasture was on fire.

"Ben," I called, as if I'd just remembered. "Would you help me find the cider?"

He stood up from the picnic table.

My mother looked at him over her paper plate, and then at me, and then very carefully at her deviled egg.

He crossed the grass in his flannel with a faint, innocent smile, and I turned and walked into the dim.

The barn smelled of hay and dust and warm wood.

The cider was in a crate at the far end, by the row of empty horse stalls, where the owner kept the rental supplies.

I went past it.

I went down to the last stall and waited with my back to the planks.

His steps crossed the floor behind me.

Then the door of the stall swung open, and he stepped in.

He was there, tall in the half-dark, with sunlight in his hair.

"Door," I said.

He pulled it shut.

"Stand against the wall."

He turned and put his back against the boards of the stall.

I stepped in front of him.

"Hands at your sides."